Archive for the ‘professional indemnity insurance quote’ Category

Office insurance package policies along with professional indemnity

Wednesday, January 18th, 2012

Anyone in business nowadays knows that individuals, customers and even suppliers are becoming more litigious. The law has been changed in recent years to make it easier for members of the public to pursue a claim against anyone they see fit. We have all had to see or listen to TV or Radio advertisements enticing you to take action against others. Although there has been a huge growth in the claims by individuals, we are also seeing increased activity from on business claiming against another.

One trigger for this has been the build up to the recession, the recession and it’s aftermath. When cash is tight and also king, more businesses are prone to make claims than to absorb the costs themselves. A second trigger has been the availability of legal expenses insurance. Many business insurance policies now include an element of commercial legal expenses cover as standard. It is therefore easier for businesses to pursue action, in the knowledge that they have cover in place to pay for the legal costs associated with this.

It is therefore important that you have adequate cover in force to protect you against such claims. For most office insurance policies, the legal expenses cover is included as standard. Overall limits of indemnity are usually around the £50,000 to £100,000 mark. In addition to legal expenses cover, you need to make sure that you have adequate liability insurance, both public and products liability. For most offices though, the fees or turnover are earned as a result of services that are offered. A physical product is not always provided. In these cases you need to consider, carefully, whether there is a need or requirement for professional indemnity insurance. Most of the standard package contracts will actually exclude this cover.

There are a few, and we mean few, insurers that will offer all of the covers under one contract. However, in reality it is much more competitive to get one contract for the office and one for professional indemnity. PI cover is for your professional negligence. Public and products liability operate where these is evidence of physical damage or injury. For example the computer that catches light or the person that trips over. Professional indemnity need not have evidence of a physical loss, but a financial loss. You provide advice, for a fee, and someone suffers financially if this is incorrect.

If you are worried about whether this is a requirement for your particular business, then you speak to an independent business insurance broker and get their opinion on whether this is a requirement for your business or not.

Posted in business insurance, business insurance advice, business insurance broker, office insurance, office insurance quote, professional indemnity insurance, professional indemnity insurance quote | Comments Off

Professional indemnity insurance – which limit to choose?

Thursday, November 17th, 2011

If we are approached for a commercial building insurance quote, one of the main questions we will ask is “how much is the sum insured”? Unlike cover for your house, where there may be a blanket limit of £400,000 or £500,000, for commercial properties you will declare the amount. Whilst it is not easy to get this figure, the policy is very clear, you are covered for x amount, as long as it represents the correct rebuilding cost.

But what has this to do with professional indemnity insurance? Not a lot, except to show that with building insurance, you can actually, see  and feel the “thing” that is insured. You can pay a surveyor to give you that valuation to confirm exactly how much you should insure for.

Now, if you are looking for professional indemnity insurance, how do you know what amount to insure for? If you are undertaking a contract for a customer and they are insisting on the cover being in force, then your job may be easier if they put a limit in writing to you. But, if they don’t or you are just looking for a professional indemnity quote, how do you decide what limit to go for?

The main insurers we use, will quote from £100,000 up to £5,000,000 any one claim. One quote this afternoon went from £290.00 at £100k to £4,3970.00 at £5m. You can see that there is a big difference in premium because there is a big difference in the potential cost to the insurers.

What you do not want to do is over insure yourself, the insurers of course enjoy this, because they get more money. Our job, as a business insurance broker is to get you the best deal, price and cover wise, for the insurance you need. Our advice is that you have to sit down, maybe with your colleagues and work out the worst case scenario cost and the average case scenario loss. Then, speaking to your broker you have to work out whether you go for the higher or lower or somewhere in between. It will also depend on whether your quote or cover is any one claim (better) or in the aggregate (less better!). As ever, get advice from a professional independent business insurance broker.

Posted in business insurance, business insurance broker, commercial building insurance, professional indemnity insurance, professional indemnity insurance quote | Comments Off

Professional Indemnity Insurance – which limit to choose?

Friday, August 26th, 2011

Professional indemnity insurance is, along with all types of insurance, something that people do not really want to buy nor do they really want to use it. But, if they do need to use it, they want it to operate fully to cover their claim.

This means, when we get a new quote request, and we ask the customer what limit of indemnity do they need, we get one of, or a combination of these three responses:-

1) What is the minimum limit you can sell me?

2) I need a limit of £x under either the terms of a contract or because their professional body requires cover to be in force.

3) What do you suggest?

We never answer question 1 without addressing question 3. The minimum we can usually quote is £100,000, but this will be inadequate for most businesses in 2011. We then discuss with the client about, in the worst possible scenario, what could they face as a single claim. Following this we will usually quote three or four different limits so that they can see the differences, in premium, are not that great when you go from £250k, to £500k, to £1m to £2m.

If they ask for a standard limit due to a contract or membership of a professional body, we will ask if this is still sufficient. Being part of a professional body, with them asking for a limit is usually at a sensible limit. This is because the professional body knows what type of claims to expect. As an example, as a business insurance broker we have to have in force £2,000,000 worth of cover, in respect of each and every claim.

The problems occur when they are entering into a contract which does not state a limit, this is where they may be tempted to take the lower limit. It is of course up to the customer to choose, we can only recommend. But, if they are choosing a limit which we feel is inadequate, we will tell them this and give them the option of a higher limit. The difficulty is that the customer can sometimes perceive this as Businessinsure flogging them a limit that they do not need, so we can earn more money. That, however, is the brokers dilemma though, We have to give good quality professional advice, but the customers want it on the cheap.

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Professional indemnity – is there more choice?

Wednesday, April 20th, 2011

There are a growing number of companies offering professional indemnity insurance. Traditionally, the market was fairly small and, compared to other package products, there are fewer insurers offering this cover. But, there is more choice out there. The key thing is that the commercial insurance companies that offer the cover are still being fairly selective.

Take solicitors professional indemnity, it is easy to see why a new insurer may move into this market. There are thousands of solicitors and they all pay thousands upon thousands of pounds for their cover. But, and it is a big but, it is not that profitable. The last four or five years saw a bit of price war with premiums slowly decreasing. A few new entrants made disastrous forays into this area. Quinn insurance suffered from underpricing and some slacker underwriting than other insurers. Hence they grew market share but they did not tend to pick up the right risks. This is always an issue for a business insurance that decides to move into a new area. They tend to take the easy route and “buy” themselves into the market by underpricing. But, with long tail liability insurance (such as PI), the claims turn around bite you on the bum years down the line of you are not careful.

It is all well and good entering the market, but three, four or even ten years down the line you can rue the day.

But, if you are a management consultant or IT consultancy, you may find it is easier to get yourself cover. The insurers that are involved in the market like the risks that give them less claims. Whilst this may seem fairly obvious it is sometimes more difficult to find the insurer that is going to charge you the right price. The best way to deal with this is to go to a business insurance broker, they will know the best way forward and what insurer, at the current point in time, is the best one to go to.

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Business insurance – feedback please

Saturday, January 22nd, 2011

Here at Businessinsure, on a busy week, we can providing in excess of 100 new business insurance quotes. In addition to the many thousands of existing policyholders requiring renewal, amendments and of course claims.

We do pride ourselves on being one of the best internet and telesales specialist SME brokers in the UK. If we can’t get a quote to you within an hour or so, we feel we have somehow failed. Of course, it is not a bad thing, there are reasons why it can take a few hours to get a quote, particularly when it is a more complex or larger risk.

What we do want though is feedback. For example, we had an office insurance enquiry, including professional indemnity. Their existing insurers had increased from just under £3,000 per annum to slightly over £4,000. A 30% increase. In any one’s books, this is a bit excessive as they had been claims free for over 5 years.

We duly got a few quotes, the best combined insurance, including the PI, was just under £2,600. So we quoted, all within a couple of hours of the initial call. The problem was, when we phoned them up to see how we had got on, their existing insurers had miraculously dropped from £4,061.95, to £2,500.00. So, we had done all the work, we had forced the clients insurers to do something drastic and unfortunately, because we were so quick we gave the existing insurers the chance to slice a chunk off the premium.

If this is happenign to you after we have quoted, we would appreciate you letting us know. Insurers are a law to themselves. If the client had not looked around, they would have got away with a 30% increase.

You have to remember though, that changing your business insurance provider is nowhere near as complicated as your existing insurer will make out. If you are looking for a cheaper quote, give us a try today.

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Professional indemnity insurance – in isolation.

Saturday, October 2nd, 2010

When business insurance companies talk about covers “in isolation” all this actually means is that there is a different, or separate, policy for this particular type of cover.

If you think about any policy, such as for a car, it is really a collection of different types of cover, under one policy. You will get windscreen, third party liability, asset damage (ie to your own car), personal effects (in the car) and possibly legal expenses.

Insurers will have policies for all types of trade based on a similar principle, they will have one overall policy, but within it there are different types of cover. However, in certain cases, for more specialist cover it is usually better, cover and cost wise, to get a separate policy.

One of these covers is professional indemnity insurance. This has always been a more specialist area and there are very few insurers that offer this cover as part of a package. You may have a form of package from a broker, but when you look into the deepest, darkest depths of the policy wording you will see that the PI insurance is provided by a different insurer.

But how do you know this is giving you the best deal? Quite simply, you don’t. Any broker is not legally obliged to offer you the cheapest products, the sensible reason being, that the cheapest product is very rarely the best.

For professional indemnity, you really do need to speak to a specialist to see what the market, at that particular time, has to offer you.

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Professional Indemnity Insurance – pick your limit of indemnity

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

When looking for a professional indemnity insurance quote, you will, if you use the internet, find this to be a much easier process than 10 years ago.

In 2010, you can take your pick from the type of intermediary you want or you can go direct. The recommendation is, as with all types of commercial insurance, to speak to a business insurance broker.

Their raison d’etre is to serve you, the purchasing customer. They understand what you want, what you need and where to go to get the best price.

But, the question you will be asking yourself is what limit of indemnity do I go for. With business building insurance, it is easy. You get a professional valuation done of the building and they work out the square footage and the rebuilding cost per square foot. Multiply the two and you get the amount that you need to get cover for.

With PI insurance, things are not quite so easy. Depending on the insurer, you can get a limit of indemnity (the maximum amount of any one loss) from £100,000 all the way up to £5 or £10m. Obviously, the higher the limit of indemnity, the higher the premium. You do not, therefore, want to pay over the odds so need to pick your limit carefully.

There are two ways to do this. Firstly, discuss with your broker what sort of limit they feel you need. Ultimately, it is your decision but they can help you understand what is needed.

Secondly, and you do not get so much choice, you may need to go with whatever limit your customers require.

You may be looking for cover because a supplier or customer insists on you having this, if it is the case then you need to speak to them to see if changing the limit is a deal breaker. If it is, then stick with it but if not, you may decide to negotiate the requirement to be for a lower limit as this will be cheaper for you. Only do this though after giving full consideration to the steps in 1 above.

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